Nursing exam questions are terrible (according to science)

I took an ethics class and was amazed at the some people could come at a situation. I am a very linear, concrete thinker. I had a difficult time in nursing school. After I took the ethics class, I saw how other people approched problems and was amazed. I woudl have never came up with the answers they did' I don't think that way. In that class, there wasn't really a wrong or right answer, so it was fun to debate the issues. I had trouble in nursing school because the teachers tried to replicate the NCLEX-type questions on their own. For the vetted programs, like NLN and Kaplan, I did great because they were good questions. Example: we had 35 out of 36 people get a question wrong on a test. The test was not keyed wrong (thank you, scantron) and when we discussed it, the teachers woudl not budge. When that many get a question wrong, it is just plain a bad question. We never did get them to throw it out.

But I do share your frustration with nursing pushing utterly mindless garbage like therapeutic touch and Roger's unitary "science" of human beings. The other "theories" (Roy, Orem, King, Neuman) which like Maslow are actually viewpoints or paradigms or models - NOT scientific Theories - are simply varying ways on putting fancy labels on observations of human behavior. Even Henderson is just a restatement of Nightingale. The majority of that stuff is just nursing academia having a huge inferiority complex and can go.

The nursing diagnosis/care plan stuff is just a way of showing you can document a patient's needs and interventions. It's arbitrary if it didn't exist as it is, some other BS method would exist.

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While I agree that there is a lot wrong with nursing education, I don't agree with many of your perspectives on the situation. Henderson's work was NOT just a re-statement of Nightingales's work. The other theories you mention ARE scientific or at least a combination of science and philosophy -- BOTH of which are important to nursing (though I admit, we need to move on and let them and nursing scholarship in general evolve).

Maybe you are going to a bad school ... or maybe you are just not attracted to the scholarly side of nursing. But I am sure there are a lot of things that you like that other nurses would hate, too. That doesn't make everything you like "bad".

Perhaps you went to a bad school(s) when it discussed evidence based scientific theories because you do not appear to recognize what one is.

It doesn't matter who "likes" it and it doesn't matter where you went to school. My problem is that the scholarly side of nursing is NOT scholarly. The word "Theory" - capital T - has a very specific meaning in an evidence based environment. Claptrap like Rogers' "electrodynamic fields" and the so called intervention of therapeutic touch are complete and total nonsense with no place in anything labeled evidence-based.

When nursing textbooks discuss theories they start with Einstein and Newton then roll right in to the inane Rogers.

An evidence based Theory has to explain the underlying causes for a set of observations and it has to be falsifiable. Nursing theories are not; they are viewpoints, paradigms, approaches, "worldviews"....

Which is fine, just don't use the word "Theory," and claim it is scientific, because it isn't. Nursing "theories" are simply arbitrary ways of viewing a situation which cannot be tested or falsified. You can invent infinite ways to conceptualize something - that does NOT make it a scientific theory.

Nursing texts love to use Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Newton's Laws as examples. Well, lets look at those two examples. You'll note that Newton is famous for gravitational laws, not theories. Newton explained, among other things, how two bodies interact gravitationally. He did not explain why this happens, only how. This is a scientific law. Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures is a law many nurses are familiar with.

Einstein, on the other hand, developed a Theory of how objects interact gravitationally. He found that massive objects curve space. (Obviously much more to it than this). He explained WHY objects in space behaved as Newton said they did. Einstein said that even light follows these space time curves and tested this theory by noting how the position of stars appears to change when viewing how their light bends around the sun during a solar eclipse. Light in space travels in straight lines, it can not bend unless space is curved. And so Einsteins Gravitational Theory was confirmed.

THAT is evidence based science and is what makes a theory.

Now, if nursing would simply cease to claim "evidence based," "critical thinking," and "scientific" traits I would have no problem. Nursing could continue to make goofy claims and invent paradigms for anything it wants and trudge happily along as "Alternative" medicine just like homeopathy and chiropractic.

But they don't do that. If Nursing wants to be taken seriously, it needs to start acting seriously.

I just wish we would stop trying to reinvent the wheel. A shockingly successful paradigm for healthcare already exists and it is the medical model. Why does nursing have such a strong desire to act like it isn't medicine, sure not the level of a MD, but definitely medicine.

The medical model = here's a drug you're fixed

The Nursing model = here's my care, you're healed

Nursing has nothing to do with medicine. Being a former EMT is was hard for me to understand that and I too was frustrated with grasping nursing and NCLEX questions.I thought I entered the wrong field, I was torn between going to PA school or Nursing school. But 3 semesters later I think nurses are on a level with the patient that some doctors will just never understand. I am glad I choose nursing.

I remember one of my teachers early on talking about how nursing wasn't like engineering or math because you had to think critically.

Nursing isn't anything like engineering and math... it's orders of magnitude easier and requires much LESS critical thinking.

One dumb-butt nursing instructor, that one.

Why does nursing have such a strong desire to act like it isn't medicine

The medical model = here's a drug you're fixed

The Nursing model = here's my care, you're healed

Nursing has nothing to do with medicine.

Nursing has everything to do with medicine... what's all that stuff we keep pushing, pouring, and popping into patients?

I agree. I have a microbiology degree prior to nursing and I hate nursing tests. Thank God after many practice, I got good enough that I passed the nclex. I would rather the questions be like questions on the CCRN test.

Well, then again only 60% may make it nursing school. However, in my other degree, the tests are hard that teachers have to curve the grades or only a few will pass. They don't curve in nursing school and A is like 93+

I wish you all the best in you exams. may the good Lord you through successfully.

Which care, to a large part, involves administering the right medicine in the right way at the right time.

That's quite simply absurd.

Nursing has everything to do with medicine... what's all that stuff we keep pushing, pouring, and popping into patients?

Yes nurses use drugs as part of the treatment but it's not just the sole reason for treatment. Medicine is not giving drugs. Giving drugs is giving drugs, anyone can do that. Medicine is a procedure for treating a patient. Nursing is another procedure for treating a patient. Both disciplines use drugs yes.

What happen every-time you go to a doctor? 99.99% of the times they write a prescription and send you on your way. If you are an experienced nurse and I'm just a student and you can't see the difference, then I can't help you.

So why then don't they merge the disciplines and make nurses go to medical school? Why did nurses not go to medical school and learn to push drugs? Nursing is more, that's my point.

Medicine is like being a robot. See the symptoms, make a diagnosis, treat, repeat. If the NCLEX was like that everyone would pass. I remember in one of my clinicals there was a bunch of residents going to see a patient. The doctor did not even touch the patient. The residents were all over the patient without consideration...I mean 2 of them had there stethoscope on the chest at the same time, while the 3rd was doing something else and that just looked wrong.

And to the other poster, if nursing was anything similar to engineering, I would be at the top of my class because that is what my first career entails and I have an associates in engineering and engineering is by no means related to critical thinking.